• We were able to reinvent a national dish and garner 42 million earned impressions (in a population of 35 million). Earned media content focused on the power of data to make the recipes unique and relevant.

• We achieved a 91% positive sentiment rating on all campaign social posts.

• We achieved different type of media coverage with the “cultural mash up” data story – local foodies, tech media – thus reaching new audiences. The press coverage we received was also more editorial in nature than our typical coverage.

• Website engagement metrics support the fact that it wasn’t just about the food. We managed to intrigue people with the underlying technology story – 30% of site visitors engaged with the “How it Works” page.

• Paid digital media elements exceeded all previous publication benchmarks, for any advertiser:

o Toronto Life exceeded all 2014 benchmarks for the publication by +3%

o La Presse Plus exceeded all 2014 benchmarks for the publication by +22%

• Plus we were able to drive people to attend two brand activation tasting events:

o National press covered both events

o We earned 3 million impressions in user-generated content (posts, images, and videos)

Gourmet poutine is trending among food lovers across Canada. And our poutines were different. They were an unheard of hybrid of international flavours and creativity grounded in real data. Watson powered our ability to interpret the unique characteristics of each city in a way that brought new relevance to this Canadian favourite.

The Watson Cognitive Cooking system’s “hedonic psychophysics” formula allowed us to gear the Pleasantness lever toward more “surprising” results and the Compatibility levels to “unexpected” pairings, taking Poutine from comfort food to challenge food.

This resulted in finished products that pushed culinary boundaries and captured attention among a mass audience. Poutine became the entry point to tell a bigger Watson story, creating interest in this unique IBM technology and the scope of its potential applications.

The fact that the dishes were so unique and tailored to local palates contributed a level of excitement to the program. This was seen at the local level in Toronto and Montreal, as demonstrated by the earned shares and media coverage.

Thanks to the data, we were able to predict which recipe would be most appealing to the citizens of each city, creating videos of the recipes that we considered most likely to win.

Through taste and through expansive media coverage, Canadians were able to experience the power of data-related technologies such as Watson to fuel new levels of culinary creativity.